PAKISTAN TO LODGE COMPLAINT AT UN OVER INDIA’S ‘ECOLOGICAL TERRORISM’

Pakistan plans to lodge a formal complaint against India at the United Nations, accusing it of “eco-terrorism” over air strikes that damaged pine trees and brought the nuclear-armed nations to blows, Pakistan’s climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam said on Friday.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan plans to lodge a complaint against India at the United Nations, accusing it of “eco-terrorism” over air strikes that, it claimed, damaged pine trees and brought the nucleararmed nations to blows, a government minister said on Friday.

Tensions between the two countries escalated after Indian Air Force (IAF) bombed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed’ s biggest training camp near Balakot deep inside Pakistan early Tuesday. It came 12 days after the JeM claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a CRPF convoy in Kashmir’s Pulwama, killing 40 personnel.

Pakistan denied there were any such camps in the area and locals said only one elderly villager was hurt.

On Friday, Pakistan climate change minister Malik Amin Aslam said Indian jets bombed a “forest reserve” and the government was undertaking an environmental impact assessment, which will be the basis of a complaint at the United Nations and other forums. “What happened over there is environmental terrorism,” Aslam told Reuters, adding that dozens of pine trees had been felled .“There has been serious environmental damage .”

Two Reuters reporters who visited the site of the bombings, where four large crate rs could be seen, said up to 15 pine trees had been brought down by the blasts. Villagers dismissed Indian claims that hundreds of militants were killed.

The United Nations states that “destruction of the environment, not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly, is clearly contrary to existing international law ”, according to the UN General Assembly resolution 47/37.